Five for Friday! {First Week Back}

We had our first day of school on Monday! I teach two classes of ELAR. One class has 20 students and the other has 19 so that's pretty good. They haven't balanced classes yet though so it's possible we get a couple more. My morning class is amazing. They are so quiet, sometimes I stand there like what should I do because I'm not used to it at all! The afternoon class needs a LOT of work with listening and following directions, but hopefully they'll get there soon!

S'mores goldfish as a little welcome gift. You can download the tag here. I made it for kinder through fourth grade.

There are two name tags because I teach two classes. I have one class keep their things on the right side of the desk under their name tag and the other class on the left. They get it eventually. The all about me sheet is something I edited that I had saved from a few years back...I didn't make the original though so I don't want to share. If you know where it came from, please let me know so I can give credit!

Our students keep their homework, spelling words, HF words, etc. all in this binder and carry it back and forth between home/school and the two classrooms.

A complete lack of technology has been the demise of my week. Last year, I had a Promethean board and 25 iPads. This year, I had nothing the first days of school except a Promethean board connected to nothing. What to do? I apparently have been spoiled because this was soooo upsetting to me! Plus, I can't write on the Promethean board. I literally had to stick chart paper to it and write on that. By the end of the week, I had a projector on a cart...going old school...the kids can't sit in front of it and every time the cart moves, I have to recalibrate.

My school has some brand new classrooms and they FORGOT, yes forgot, as in they had no idea, to put electricity in the ceilings...thus no announcements can be heard and no projectors installed until this is addressed...which will apparently be by 9/15...fingers crossed because I'm dying! We didn't even have phone extensions for the first couple days. On the plus side, there have been no interruptions lol.

I love Kevin Henkes read alouds! They are such great stories with wonderful vocabulary and the kids are always interested, even though they've probably heard them before. We read Chrysanthemum, Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, and Wemberly Worried. I forgot to take pictures of their writing in their reading response journals. But, we did do this making connections activity with Chrysanthemum, which I found for free here from Holly Griffith on TpT. It actually went perfectly with bucket filling and bucket dipping too, which my students realized on their own!

I decided that this year I am going to try to bind up some of their things into books instead of just sending them home to the trash...I don't have the space to hang them all and I figure they might enjoy reading what others wrote as the year goes on.

We also did a couple of activities from Abby Mullins' Super in Second pack.

My students LOVE the find a friend activities, which makes me happy because I like doing activities like that throughout the year with practice sheets to make them less boring. It might also be because they love using my freshly decorated clipboards! Really, they just like being up and moving around.

I also had them work in pairs to compare first and second graders using a double bubble map from the same pack. I made them into another book. It's funny to see their responses.

For writing this week, we worked on a first week of second grade booklet from the Savvy Second Grade Fun packet by the Bubbly Blonde.

They loved the pencil book (I did too!). I forgot to take pictures of the inside, but they came out really cute.

We also made heart maps at the end of the week for writing ideas and glued them to the front of our writing journals. They weren't super specific, we'll have to work on that, but they seemed to really like doing it.

Aww...we're already in their hearts.

Yay for school!

I found this heart free on TpT and printed it slightly smaller so it would fit on the inside cover of a composition book.

I can not imagine going back to no projector or having to calibrate it every time - I am feeling your pain. Love the Chrysanthemum making connections activity - thanks for sharing the find. I had stopped making our work into class books for a bit and want to do more of that again this year - especially when I come across old class books - they always make me smile. Looks like you had a great week, enjoy your weekend.

About Me

I'm Jessica, a former 1st and 2nd grade teacher turned stay at home mom to the cutest little girl in the world. She loves all things books just like her mommy. I have a master's degree in curriculum and instruction and hope to be a reading specialist one day.